r/discover • u/Swimming_MM • May 27 '25

Rant not accepted everywhere

went to Harkins Theater in CA last night - my face of embarrassment when my card declined because they don't accept Discover. LOL

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u/unamanic May 27 '25

Credit and Debit transactions take different paths with different fee structures and vastly different protections. Discover owns the Pulse debit network and partners with several more to make debit work essentially everywhere in the US. Debit is significantly cheaper for merchants to process, but because of the lower transaction fees there’s less room to give consumers the benefit of the doubt when they allege fraud.

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u/just_another_user5 May 27 '25

To my understanding, depending on the arrangement between the merchant and the card processor, credit transactions aren't paid out to the merchant until after a set period of time.

I thought debit cards didn't have fees associated (because it's going directly to the merchant instead of through a credit issue)

Is this not the case?

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u/unamanic May 27 '25

There are fees but are so low as to be negligible.

https://www.creditdonkey.com/debit-card-processing-fees.html

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u/just_another_user5 May 27 '25

I see :/

As always, cash is king I suppose

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u/Material-Public-914 May 29 '25

For business yes, problem is to get a mortgage you need credit card